The Peephole
A shanked field goal ended up changing his life forever.
Thomas had been watching the game with his heart in his throat. After his team had led an impressive march down the field to score a clutch touchdown in a game that would determine whether or not they’d make the playoffs, there were less than three minutes left in the fourth quarter.
Unfortunately, the opponents put together a drive of their own. His team did their best to stop them, even sacking their quarterback twice, but they still got close enough as time ticked down to bring on their kicking unit.
It was just a chip shot, a 33-yard field goal, so Thomas was sure they were going to make it. But then the gods intervened and the kick sailed just left of the crossbar, leaving everyone in the stadium in shocked silence.
Jumping and hooting and hollering, Thomas ran to the bedroom to call his brother to gloat about the sweet deliciousness of that improbable win.
In all his excitement, when he yanked the phone off the charger, his shoulder hit the picture on the wall, knocking it askew. Not that he cared, not when chortling down the line to his big brother living in the big city with his fancy job and fancy house about how his team had kicked their glorified butts.
Nonetheless, seeing that print hanging crooked on the wall started to nag at him over the next few weeks. Thomas hated waking up and seeing that stupid sailboat pointing at a drunken angle toward the ceiling, so on his day off, he decided to finally do something about it.
After watching a couple of YouTube videos and going to the store for supplies, he was ready to get the damn thing level once again.
The landlord had used a single cheap nail to hang the picture, which had been pushed further into the wall, causing it to go askew. Thomas took down the picture and laid it down on his bed, preparing to mount the proper hangar he’d purchased at the store when he discovered the hole.
At first, Thomas thought it was just a crack, something the landlord had been too lazy to fix, which explained why there was a sailboat picture on the wall when the ocean was hundreds of miles away.
But upon further examination, the hole was perfectly smooth and had clearly been drilled intentionally. Furthermore, it was about as wide as his pinky finger, far too big to be something left over from a screw or something like that.
Thomas shrugged it off and was just about to install the new hangar when he noticed a flicker of light from the other end of the hole.
Curious, he put his eye right up to it and gasped when he realized he was looking into the adjoining apartment’s bedroom. The young woman who lived there was only in frame for a second before she left the room, but it was definitely her.
He’d seen her around a few times and even nodded at her, but she’d always ignored him. He hadn’t really tried to press his luck because she was way out of his league.
She had a gorgeous trim body with waist-length raven black hair, and she was always headed off to yoga class or something because she would wear this white sports bra and skin-tight legging combo that drove him wild.
He’d hoped that he might bump into her around campus and strike up a conversation that way, but it just hadn’t happened. Whoever she was, she lived in her world, and he was stuck in his. They might be neighbors, separated only by a thin wall, but they might as well be living in separate universes.
Until he discovered the peephole, of course.
The question was - what to do about it? The right thing to do would’ve been to hang the picture and forget the peephole even existed. He wasn’t the voyeur type anyway. And yeah, his neighbor was hot, but so what?
Was he gonna stand there and watch her get dressed like some nerd in a 1980s sex comedy? That seemed ridiculous, especially when there was an entire world of women online eagerly waiting for him at the click of a button.
Anyway, he had a video game battle scheduled with his friends that afternoon, so he hung up the picture properly and went about his business for the rest of the day. But after his team got trounced by a group of teenagers from Bulgaria and he’d slammed three or four energy drinks, the hour was late, and he was revved up with nothing to do.
Just to satisfy his curiosity, he thought he’d take a quick glance through the peephole and then put on a movie or something.
Chances are that the only thing he’d see would be pitch blackness on her side. But the second he took the picture down, he saw light coming through the peephole, nearly making him gasp out loud.
As quick as a wink, Thomas shut off all the lights in his room so he could see better. He then bent over and stared through the peephole. She was just walking around her room, not doing anything particularly exciting, but knowing that he was spying on her without her knowledge sent a little thrill down his spine.
The field of view was rather narrow, so he couldn’t quite tell what she was doing, but it looked like maybe she was choosing an outfit because she kept walking over to her closet and taking out clothes before holding them up in front of herself.
Again, there wasn’t anything particularly exciting about it, but she was really pretty, and he found himself enjoying getting a long look at her without having to avert his gaze.
He was just about to put the picture back when she must’ve finally decided on an outfit because the next thing he knew, she whipped off her top. He only got a brief glimpse of her bare back and maybe a tiny bit of side boob, but it was enough to get his pulse racing.
She then spent an agonizing ten minutes or so putting on a button-up shirt and then turning and twisting in front of the mirror, checking out her reflection.
How long did it take for her to see that she was hot and would look good in anything? Maybe she was half-blind or something because she kept making tiny adjustments to her shirt, and pretty soon it was driving him wild with frustration.
Just take it off and try on something else, he kept thinking, but she never did. Instead, the doorbell rang and she went to go answer it.
Initially, Thomas hoped that she’d return to the bedroom with her visitor and that all kinds of wild and frisky things might ensue. But whoever he or she was, they were somewhere else in her apartment.
He strained his ears, trying to see if he could hear them talking, but there was nothing, maybe just the faintest murmur. The wall between their apartments was thin, but it wasn’t that thin.
And so Thomas regretfully replaced the picture on his wall. His neck had a crick in it from all that hunching over, and all he’d gotten for his troubles was a one-second glimpse of her bare back as she put on a shirt. It really wasn’t worth the effort.
Nonetheless, a seed had been planted, one that would soon grow to bear consequential fruit.
